ebrary e-Book Content Now Discoverable Through ProQuest Platform

ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Just over five months after acquiring e-book innovator ebrary®, ProQuest launched technology that will link the companies' search platforms, enabling users to discover e-books in the context of their libraries' ProQuest content and use tools from both environments. ProQuest's all-new platform is rolling out in libraries around the world, bringing a flexible technological architecture that allows users to dive deeper into multiple content sources in multiple formats-- wherever that information may reside. With the new connecting technology, one search leads users to ebrary's e-book content that's side-by-side with relevant reports, videos, journal and newspaper articles, and more. One click moves them quickly to the full-text whether it's housed in the ebrary or ProQuest platform.

"E-book content is becoming increasingly valued by users. Connecting them to ebrary's extraordinary collection along with ProQuest's wealth of information enriches the entire research experience," said Marty Kahn, ProQuest CEO. "The speed at which we were able to make this happen is a direct result of the ProQuest platform design for interoperability with other technologies. We believe the future demands openness and collaboration so we're building flexible, connecting points and paths to information -- no matter where it resides."

"For more than a decade, ebrary has been focused on e-books. In addition to aggregating authoritative titles from more than 500 world renowned publishers, we have been continually striving to develop the best and most innovative technologies to make the research process easy and efficient," said Kevin Sayar, President of ebrary. "By integrating search on the ProQuest platform, we can increase discovery and usage of important information of many types, while maintaining the very best platform for experiencing e-books."

The first release supports discovery of titles in ebrary's Academic Complete™ e-book database recently named to the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title list. With over 70,000 e-books, unlimited access, and continued growth, thousands of libraries throughout the world rely on Academic Complete to meet the growing digital content needs of students, faculty and staff.

Later this year, the integration will be expanded to enable a simultaneous search of ebrary's rapidly growing selection of more than a quarter million e-books along with ProQuest's eight centuries of highly-respected scholarly and popular content. ProQuest holds extraordinarily diverse content, from dissertations and academic journals to trade publications, reports and magazines, as well as news content in multiple media. Users can connect to full-text of any of the sources through the results screen, moving directly to relevant passages in e-books through ebrary's ability to navigate directly to search terms and through relevancy ranking by document and chapter. Further, users will have access to both platforms' cutting-edge research tools, such as ebrary's InfoTools™, which provides contextual linking across multiple online resources, and shareable bookshelves, which automatically store links to highlights and notes, and automatic citations with URL hyperlinks back to the source. Users also benefit from new tools from ProQuest that enable users to share findings and create new content.

Work to connect the ebrary and ProQuest platforms began in January when ebrary became a member of the ProQuest® family of businesses, setting the stage for a significant acceleration of the process of serious research.

"Users care about quick, accurate connections to information and the ability to work with that information when they find it. They don't care where it lives," said Tim Babbitt, ProQuest senior vice-president of platform management. "Because the technology we're working with is open enough to connect to new technologies we can take users where they want to go. ProQuest says 'start here' for a reason… the path to the best information is simpler and richer every day."

A pre-release of the linking technology will be available shortly for libraries with Academic Complete and one or more of ProQuest Central, ProQuest Research Library, and ProQuest 5000 on the new ProQuest platform. Customers should watch for more information over the coming weeks. Discovery of ebrary content with full text searching will be available broadly in the fall.

ebrary is a leading provider of e-books and research technology to libraries worldwide. Founded in 1999, the company offers more than 273,000 e-books from over 500 trusted publishers under flexible models including subscription, perpetual archive (purchase), patron driven acquisition, and short-term loans. ebrary is the only e-book provider that enables customers to upload and integrate their own digital materials right from their computers with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast) technology as well as apply cross-referencing with multiple online resources with InfoTools™ technology. A member of the ProQuest® family of companies, ebrary is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, USA.

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world's knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information.

ProQuest's massive information pool is accessible through the all-new ProQuest® platform, which moves beyond navigation to empower researchers to use, create, and share content—accelerating research productivity.

This energetic, fast-growing organization includes the Summon™ web-scale discovery service, the new ProQuest Dialog™ service, and business units ebrary®, Serials Solutions®, RefWorks-COS™ and Bowker®.